Month: February 2016

Someone once walked into my office with a basket of Chihuahua puppies. “Here, you want to hold one?” “Eww, no.” “What, you don’t like dogs?” “No, I LOVE dogs!” I threw up my hands and walked away. There was no way I was going to be able to explain why “loving dogs” and “feeling creeped out by Chihuahua puppies” could coexist in one person.

I’ve realized that most people, even supposed dog lovers, don’t really have a feel for the fact that there’s somebody THERE in a dog’s head, a being with feelings, a sense of self, and this other thing: a sort of life-agenda that has nothing to do with humans.

We command and demand so much from them, and mostly never let them be dogs. Which means … we never really KNOW them. We know only the fantasy-images of them we build up in our own heads. We ignore most or all of what they are.

They have no choice but to quickly adapt to whatever conditions we impose but, fairly often, it must be immensely frustrating for them.

This bears on the main reason I don’t like the tiny dogs. They’ve been interfered with so much they’re no longer capable of being DOGS. They’re more like toys with four legs — almost wholly the creations of the dimwits who made them that way.

News flash: The natural environment of the dog is not tucked into a purse. Or even cloistered away inside a house. Yet if these helpless little bundles of fur ever did get outside on their own, they’d still never have a chance of being a dog. Left to their own devices, they’d simply die.

In my mind, turning a dog into a little speck of “cute” is a betrayal of the bargain we have with them — the bargain of >>MUTUAL<< love and respect.

With Tito the Mighty Hunter, my big malamute-black lab mutt, I discovered I could find out who he was, what he wanted, what he might do, only if I made room in my life for an independent Tito, a Tito not of my making but of HIS.

I never expected him to do tricks, or be be “good” for my benefit or the benefit of others. My house was his house, my yard was his yard. If he wanted to dig a hole in the yard, that was fine with me. If he wanted to stop and gnaw on a deer carcass alongside the trail, I’d wait.

And oh boy, we took hikes, sometimes two a day. As a result, Tito was smarter, more relaxed, more aware, and friendlier than any dog I’ve ever known. He could annoy the hell out of me by occasionally going off and having his own adventures, but he was in all other ways a SPECTACULAR friend. Someone who taught ME things about life.

There are so many dangers in the human world that you can never let dogs be completely themselves, but you can let them be SOME of who and what they are.

When you do, they’ll surprise and amaze and delight — and yes, annoy — you. You’ll discover that dogs are not what you thought they were, and you’ll be a true Dog Friend rather than merely a Dog Owner.

[ Could be some duplicates in here. I’m sorting through an archive of old stuff. ]

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Yesterday, hackers uncovered a stash of nude pictures of a prominent American political figure. After viewing them, they quietly apologized to Dick Cheney and returned the photos with detailed advice on how to beef up his firewall.

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One day we will be able to upload human consciousness to computers, and achieve virtual immortality. Well, when I say “we,” I mean rich people, corporate CEOs and elected officials. Not you. You get to die. Loser.

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I don’t get why those Nice Christians decided Harry Potter was satanic, but they completely missed Mary Poppins. She was a witch, after all. When she wasn’t entertaining the kids, she probably cavorted naked with demons.

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If Mary Poppins married Poppin Fresh … It’s a damned shame, but she’d be Mary Fresh.

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Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” would be a lot less noteworthy if he’d gone with his first choice of title — “The Yawn.”

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If Kryptonians were giant carnivorous insects, we’d probably feel a lot different about Superman.

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Economy cars should come in the civilian version and the military version. Because I would totally buy a military-grade Smart Car. Vroom, vroom! Pew-pew-pew!

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I think it would be fun to see a TV show called “History’s Assholes.” Dear History Channel …

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If you’re not willing to try Brain Piercing, you’re not hard core.

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Flasher Philosophy: “I’ll show you mine if … Aw, screw it, I’ll just show you mine.”

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Back when the guillotine was so busy during the French Revolution … do you suppose they washed and disinfected the blade after each use?

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Aw, come on. If I was REALLY living in a Fool’s Paradise, there would be a lot more Batman T-shirts, ice cream, water slides and big funny hats. And giggling. A whole lot more giggling.

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Isn’t it funny how much we breed dogs for cuteness, and how little we breed them for intelligence, health or longevity? You’d almost think we were rotten, insensitive sonsofbitches.

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Another great day when, once again, you didn’t wake up with the police pounding on your door. They’re probably still collecting evidence.

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If we had evolved from deer, we’d all get out of school and work for several weeks in the fall, so the guys could scratch their horns against trees, and get in fights.

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In Hell, every meal is gluten-free pizza topped with tofu and quorn.

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I think a baby raccoon would make a very cool pet. If you had time for it. Otherwise it would be a bundle of destruction and mayhem. Almost like a human child.

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Lego porn movies! What? No, it’s not MY idea. It was some other guy. I swear. I still haven’t seen Lego Batman.

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If I ever write my autobiography, I think the title will be “Human As a Second Language.”

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Civilization right now: It’s sort of like we’ve gone camping and woke up in the middle of a mine field. But for the moment, we can’t help but think about how it’s a beautiful sunny day.

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I’ll bet the phrase “the crack of dawn” has an entirely different meaning in drug culture.

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The Canadian surname “Bieber” is taken from an Indian word that translates loosely as “Wait up, guys! I just stepped in something. Oh, jeez, what IS that? It’s all over my moccasin!”

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The Jupiter landings were faked.

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Hints for Future Living #325: If a time traveler asks you the date, remember: Give him the day, month and year, but also be sure to add “A.D.” Then, just to fuck with him, say “A.D. means ‘Alpha Draconis.’ You knew we Dracs took over and killed off all the humans, right?”

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Women on the Klingon homeworld, Qo’noS, are much the same as women on Earth. The one noteworthy difference is, when they fight over shoes at the Bargain Table, there’s a lot more blood.

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Oh. My. God. There are people out there named “Jedidiah Knight.”

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I was about 6 the first time I heard of someone escaping from prison. I remember thinking “How hard is it to keep a human in a cage??” To this day, I’m still sort of boggled by the idea of prison escape. I mean, prison guards have ONE job, and this entire ultra-high-security facility to help them, and they still manage to somehow fuck it up.

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In Heaven, there is a restaurant called “All Your Favorite Foods Ever.” But there’ s a 2 billion year wait.

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A solar eclipse is just a really big animated Venn Diagram. Jeez, I wish you people would just GET OVER IT.

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Wait … Casper, Wyoming doesn’t offer ghost tours?

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When you travel to the Evil Mirror Universe and discover the “you” over there is a truly good human being, it really makes you think.

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Things to say to White People to prove you’re not a bigot: I love White People’s art! My friend’s grandfather taught me some of your medicine secrets, and now I’m an honorary White Man. I saw that movie where they used White Language in WWII. That was so cool. Were any of your people in that war? Does anybody in your family still speak White?

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I’m imagining a scenario where I’m walking on the street and I see two people approaching with automatic weapons hanging from their shoulders. I quickly realize they’re pro-gun advocates with their rights on full display. With a big cheesy grin, I raise both arms in a triumphant gesture and shout “Second Amendment, meet First Amendment!” as I shoot them the bird from both hands. Would I live?

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I wonder how long it will be until all the mom-and-pop tattoo shops are overtaken by a corporate chain using digitized art and computer-controlled needles? I’m picturing a little side-shop in Wal-Mart, between the nail parlor and the eyeglass place. Five years, tops.

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Children are creepy! They look ALMOST like humans, but they’re small, and they have those big heads.

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I wonder if racehorses feel all smug about how fast they are, and then one day ride in a horse trailer on the highway and look out the window and go “Well, shit.”

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According to TV westerns and action-adventure movies, there is a place on the human chest, somewhere in the vicinity of either shoulder, where a bullet can go through you and you can walk around and talk and even make jokes after. The entrance and exit holes collectively are known as a “flesh wound,” and can be patched with a simple field dressing which, in a pinch, you yourself can hold in place. There are no bones, vital organs, arteries, muscles or major nerves that are seriously injured in such a shooting, and later you have full physical function and live to have other exciting adventures. I think this is probably true. It’s on TV, after all.

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I got a tentative offer from someone who wants to GIVE me a hot air balloon. But it’s still up in the air.

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I hope you atheists weren’t getting all lovey-dovey on Feb. 15. That was SAINT Valentine’s Day, you know, and that makes it a Christian holiday. This was not your day to celebrate. Drop the candy hearts and back away.

I just hope the food replicators on the Enterprise aren’t hooked up to human waste disintegrators.

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Idea Book: Walking Dead Laser Tag. You field 20 or so zombie players, and they pursue you through 100 acres of hilly, wooded ground, or maybe an abandoned factory. If they touch you, you’re out, and the only way you can take THEM out is with a really precise head shot. The Master Class version that takes place on the Koch Brothers’ estate uses homeless people and real bullets.

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A tattoo is a lot like a baby. Nobody will admit having one is anything but endless joy. Not because they ARE endless joy, but because once you get one, you pretty much have to love it. You can’t take it back. Besides which, nobody will tell you, “Damn, that’s an ugly baby there. You must feel just awful about it.”

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It would be funny if every clown you ever saw in your life was actually in the Witness Protection program. If one of the secrets of Witness Protection was that there was only one profession available — birthday clown. You turn evidence on your mafia boss, and next thing you know, you’re living in Alamogordo, New Mexico, honking a horn and throwing confetti at 5-year-olds. Now you know why there are so many sad clowns.

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But really, how did that jolly swagman get an entire jumbuck in his tucker bag? I say those Australians have to stop relying on faith and admit it never happened.

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Man, the lesbians in Netherlands must just get SICK of the jokes.

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I knew Plato back when he was doing great MONOlogues.

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Lesser-Known Facts #314: If you warm up a penguin to regular room temperature, they explode violently. This is actually how the Tierra del Fuegans held off the Japanese during WWII.

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Sorry, Donald, “But I’m a duck!” just doesn’t cut it. You came here for the benefits of civilization, you wear the goddam pants.

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Yeah, they set off explosives in the Twin Towers. Because just having a jet full of fuel crash into a building is iffy.

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I suppose the main reason I think horses are just about the most visually appealing animal on earth is that I grew up with them. But I still have a hard time imagining that anyone thinks warthogs are beautiful, or hyenas, compared to horses. I suspect squidlike aliens would come to earth and see horses for the first time and go “Ooooh. Those are NICE! Glodnax, take a picture of me with the hor-seez! I want to show Bremzorf when we get back.”

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I think there should be Screen Actors GUILT Awards, where actors self-nominate for various films they’ve been in. For instance, George Clooney might say “I really just feel terrible for doing Batman & Robin. It was totally ludicrous, and I think it shames the entire genre.”

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They taper to a point at the front end. That’s why they’re called “tapirs.”

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If a guy named Bob Smith marries a woman named Becky Smith, how can he be sure she takes his last name? I mean, what if she’s only halfway committed to the marriage, and keeps her own name? I’ll bet the rest of you never even think about this stuff. But somebody has to. For the sake of Bob.

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It would be weird to be a herald. You’d go everywhere with this guy and anytime he was about to walk into an office or store or something, you’d jump out in front of him and yell “Here comes Bob! Bob is about to enter the room! Look everybody, it’s Bob!”

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So it’s Cardinals that choose each new pope, huh? I mean, I knew they were PRETTY birds, but I had no idea they were so smart!

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In other news, Eeyore is now taking anti-depressants, and has been seen dancing and flying kites. He’s also turned out to be quite the jokester among the stuffed animal set, and his braying “Haw! Haw! Haw!” is now frequently heard echoing through the Hundred Acre Wood.

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Wow. There was an advertisement on TV for a show that seemed to be about a sport involving men hitting each other. Who would have thought there would be a sport form of people hitting each other? I wonder what they call it? Maybe it’s just Men Hitting Each Other.

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Few children today are aware there was a much earlier version of Transformers. But you had to climb up an electric company tower to play with them. (Usually there was just that one kid, then nobody tried it again for a few years.)

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I wanted to try the Paleo Diet, but the book I mistakenly picked up was the Palin Diet. Now I feel like going to a pizza place and getting into a brawl.

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If we ever do get World Peace, all those poor beauty contestants will have nothing to wish for.

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Space People, I’m ready to go now. Come get me.

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“Histrionic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people act in a very emotional and dramatic way that draws attention to themselves.” OH MY GOD, WHY WOULD ANYBODY EVEN SAY SUCH A THING!!? IT’S LIKE THEY’RE TARGETING ME!!!!! NOW I FEEL LIKE KILLING MYSELF!!!

I’ve known a few of them.

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To those of us in the US who hear our British friends using the term “Boxing Day” to refer to the day after Christmas: Boxing Day is the traditional event where the entire nation of Great Britain dons boxing gloves and vents the year’s frustrations with their fellow citizens by freely pummeling each other at bus stops, coffee shops, offices and even churches. Queen Elizabeth herself got in some good licks last year on members of Parliament and, it is suspected, the Royal Family. Prince Philip and Prince Charles both showed up at a post-Christmas dinner with split lips and matching shiners, while Her Highness wore a demure, self-satisfied smile.

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Boy, wings were a good idea, weren’t they? Birds have them, insects have them, mammals have them, fish have them, even trees have them (to help seeds spread). There are even reptiles and amphibians with airfoils.

There’s a lesson there somewhere. Probably a physics lesson.

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When Godzillah stomps down the pedestrian-filled streets of Tokyo, it probably feels like walking on bubble wrap.

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I heard Mexico is so angry at Obama for normalizing relations with Cuba that they’re taking back Taco Bell.

Earth has some cool things to recommend it, but there’s no way I’m staying here permanently.

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Did you know novelists just MAKE SHIT UP?? I don’t know how anybody could think that was a good thing. And it’s like they DON’T EVEN CARE that people know.

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It’s not shepherd’s pie if you don’t use real German shepherds.

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At the Open Carry convention, “He walked out on stage and blew everyone away” has a slightly different meaning.

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Lamb chops, ugh! I had lamb ONCE and my stomach said Never Again. In Texas where I grew up, I think you can actually get arrested for eating sheep. The only way we Texans eat sheep is to let the coyotes eat them first, and then eat the coyotes, skin on, in a sauce made out of grizzly testicles cooked with a flamethrower.

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It’s not RE-venge if you only do it the one time.

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I still can’t decide between being a cowboy and a karate expert. I mean, on the one hand, you get to go Yee-HAA! But on the other, you can go Hee-YAA!

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Interesting. I just looked up the word “denigrate.” Turns out the word does actually spring from a Latin root that means “to blacken.” Now all us liberals can cringe and look around every time we use it.

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Technically, nobody gets hurt when you flip the bird at a blind person. But it’s still probably a bad idea.

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There’s a new diet out that’s so easy, it will take the fat away whether you like it or not. In fact, you will have to fight to stay heavy. You will have to run and hide so the diet doesn’t find you and suck you down to nothing. You will have to take out a restraining order and hire a bodyguard to keep this diet from taking off the weight. If you even THINK about using this diet, the neighbors three houses over will look like death camp survivors. This diet is so effective it will suck the donuts out of a cop’s mouth as you drive past on the freeway. This diet is so powerful that when they tested it on a hippo, he ended up looking like a thoroughbred race horse. Okay, I’m stopping now. But you should probably send me $9.95 anyway.

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Antikythera. I say it was the targeting mechanism for a time-travel device. And somebody didn’t make it home.

I don’t know why Thor’s hammer is made of Uru rather than thorium. I mean, come on.

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Just remember you’re not the only one who’s survived a severe accident and gone on to do stuff. I broke my neck when I was 15 and I’ve never looked back!

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If you ever find yourself in a horror movie: 1) Don’t back through any doorways. 2) If the monster is out there somewhere, don’t pause to make out. 3) Next time, get a better flashlight. 4) After the monster is dead, don’t turn your back on it.

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If iPhones exist, why is there still Radio Shack?

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On Coyote Planet, when you go to the fast food drive-thru, they release a rabbit into the driveway as you pull up. You run over it, then get out and eat it off the pavement. Extra napkins, please.

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When I was a kid, I was so sensitive to bullying I didn’t like referring to those specialty pliers as “needle-nose.”

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If the poles shift, I say we cut off all aid to Poland. We shouldn’t encourage all this moving around.

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When they know nobody can overhear them, the superheroes who can fly make fun of those who can’t.

FLIGHT-SHAMING. It’s the ugly little secret of the superhero business.

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Idea Book: Novel: “Worst Contact”

A previously undiscovered tribe is located by aerial surveys of the Amazon. Anthropologists make plans to carefully contact them. But a Madison Avenue PR firm decides to jump in and contact them first, taking bids from companies for which products to introduce them to, and to film their reactions to.

The first two products are Milky Way candy bars and Budweiser beer. The civilized world is captivated by the Amazonians’ filmed astonishment at the irresistibly sweet taste of the candy, and the hilarious effects of the beer. Sales skyrocket, and more companies vie for product placement opportunities. The Amazonians are quickly introduced to such foods as Ranch Style Beans, Armour Vienna Sausage, to Wrigley’s Hubba Bubba bubble gum, and even Marlboro cigarettes.

Soon a reality TV show features an extended Amazonian family, showing family members experimenting with clothes, shoes, modern firearms, fast food. Christian missionaries arrive from the Vatican, and episodes feature the reaction of the Stone Age primitives to the revelations of God and Heaven. iPhones are handed out, and the men of the tribe are directed to first person shooter games, and YouTube videos of twerking. A staffer on the film crew begins distributing heroin to tribal friends, and they begin sneaking off to shoot up, all captured on hidden cameras.

But I think it would all have a happy ending. Probably include a lesson on the Indomitable Spirit of Man or some shit like that.

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Dick Cheney has had five heart attacks and a heart transplant. The way I figure it, he has one Horcrux left, and then he becomes mortal.

Anyone in his neighborhood, look for a large snake that always seems to be close to him.

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If a product is “tainted,” does that mean it has actually come into contact with someone’s taint?

Because I can see why you wouldn’t want something like that.

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Idea Book: Create a puppeteering rig that fits on toddlers, so that you’d have the control yoke in hand above, and the suspended toddler, below, would move as you directed.You could stage entire Shakespearean plays with baby-puppets. Well, sure it’s horrible —to you Earthlings. But galactically, this would be hilarious.

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New Horizons fly-by of Pluto. Great, now the Plutonians know where we are.

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Things Spider-Man hates to hear: “Hey, Spidey! I saw you on the Web the other day! Ha! Get it? I saw you on the WEB! Hahahahaha!!”

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Birthday tip for those of you with werewolf friends: Don’t buy them a squeaky bone chew toy. Apparently that’s insulting or something.

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Anyone going to be executed should be given a massive dose of hallucinogens an hour or so before. Because if you’re going to die, you might as well do it defending the gentle residents of the planet Zeenot from the Tark4eaan bloodmonkeys.

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Think about it: If we ever worked out direct brain-to-brain communication, we could have books written by and for babies who can’t talk yet. I think “Mommy’s Ta-tas” would be a best seller. There’s even some crossover potential in the older male demographic.

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I wonder how the Sound Technicians feel when you really do drop the mike.

[I’m afraid I’m not going to explain this very well. I have the idea in my head in a way that makes sense to me, but this post runs long because I’m having a problem getting the concept into words. I’m hoping readers can help me refine the idea into some simpler form that will be more easily understandable. Collaborative comments are welcome!]

As I think I’ve said here in the past, I believe atheism is, in some ways, rather fragile. Give us one good civilization-wide scare and I fear we’d jettison it like a broken anchor, leaping for the illusion of safety with churches and fascistic leaders. (No, it wouldn’t be you and I giving in and joining up. But if a majority of others did so, and saw atheism as a danger to their safety, you can bet we’d be back in the shadows, keeping our mouths safely shut, pretty much instantly.)

This is the main reason I continue to think we need a little something more than atheism. We need a durable permanent vehicle for atheism, a cultural container within which it can flourish.

But that cultural container can’t contain JUST atheism. In order to be a complete self-perpetuating culture, it has to have a great deal more — traditions and ceremonies, holidays and ways of living that go beyond the mere rejection of religion.

Speaking of which …

Say there’s this thing called Legacy.

And say we define it as something like “cultural wisdom that helps you live better.”

The “live better” part might include things like coexisting more comfortably with others, being better within yourself FOR yourself — stronger, more productive, more confident, more loving — and, oh, living on the planet without consuming too much of it.

The “wisdom” part implies useful lessons that can only be acquired as a result of 1) being passed down by a thoughtful elder, or 2) you yourself living a long time, having a great variety of learning experiences — including lots of painful mistakes — and thinking deeply about life and how to live it.

The “cultural” part includes that material maintained and handed on to you by your People.

So:

Your father teaches you how to treat a woman in order to create and maintain a strong, lasting relationship. That would be Legacy.

You learn in school how to read and do geometry, how to have a scientific mindset and conduct a debate. That would be Legacy.

You learn on TV to buy lottery tickets and to “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin.” That would not.

You develop an intense love of ham radio with the help of a retired music teacher who lives in your neighborhood. That would probably be Legacy.

You develop immense expertise in Pokemon from watching episodes on YouTube. That would not.

Hopefully you have Legacy in your own family. If your grandfather tells you “My grandaddy told me this when I was a boy. ‘Horace, you stick up for family. Don’t matter what they done, you stick up for ’em.’ ” you have a Legacy lesson four generations deep about family solidarity.

On a larger scale, Culture, when you think about it, is all about Legacy. Most of the time it operates without conscious direction, but it is nevertheless a body of deliberately-taught lessons about The Way Our People Do Things. You might learn to build a waterproof hut out of banana leaves or birch bark, the safe way to gather and shuck oysters, or how to bargain sharply so as not to be cheated.

Not all Legacy is good. People might intend for it to be good, they might think it’s good, but there are cultural practices handed down that are useless or even harmful. I’d consider circumcision to be a harmful Legacy. Ditto for the mandatory wearing of burkhas.

Culture and Religion and Legacy, Oh My

Religions are all about Legacy. As I think I’ve also said here in the past, religion itself is a subset of culture, which means the larger container is culture, and religion exists within it. Thus all religious acts and rituals are culture, but there is quite a lot of culture which is not religion.

There is even a great deal of what we consider religion which is actually culture. For instance, Christmas, which is technically a religious celebration, is in large part merely cultural. For most Americans, I would wager, the religious part of Christmas takes a distant second place to the secular, cultural part of it. We might pray with the family at dinner, go to church on Christmas morning, delight in each year’s Nativity, but mostly we enjoy the gift-giving, the music, the decorating and shopping. And of course all of this gets passed on as Legacy.

How important is Legacy? I’d consider it the true core of human civilization. Legacy is the civilized part of civilization. If you’ve ever read the book (or seen the movie) Lord of the Flies by William Golding — in which a group of British boys stranded on an island without adults descend into savagery — you’ve witnessed a scenario of people deprived of Legacy. Lacking any better ideas on how to survive as a group, they form a primitive, violent, superstitious tribe, and the results are not very pretty.

Atheism and Legacy

I bring up Legacy mainly to relate it to atheism.

Atheism has almost no Legacy. It’s been passed on either in a somewhat surreptitious fashion, or learned from books. A few of us figure it out completely on our own, which becomes Legacy only when and if we pass it on.

Think of the civilization around us. It contains ways to live and die and everything in between — celebrations, holidays, cultural costumes, foods to eat and not eat, the details of how to pursue and acquire a mate, a great deal more.

Civilization is a complex web of all sorts of Legacy. Historically, the people within each culture inherited the Legacy of their own culture and very little else, but today, in the mixed bag which is western overculture, we’re now exposed to a big Chinese menu of cultures, and can take from one or the other at will. But we’re also exposed to a great deal of other stuff which is neither culture nor Legacy, but is instead … marketing. The tidal wave of sales pitches and suasions, propaganda and lies washing over us daily leaves in the dust whatever lessons we might learn from our parents or teachers.

(For some of us, say city kids raised in single-parent-with-two-jobs homes and immersed in street culture, life can be almost devoid of Legacy. One’s entire view of life and how to live it could be shaped by advertising, song lyrics and whatever you picked up on the street today. There are young people in New York City — I’m pretty sure I’ve met some of them — who really believe beating and robbing elderly people, as long as you can get away with it, is a GOOD thing.)

Again, atheism by itself has almost no Legacy. We atheists have no holidays, no ceremonies, no meeting houses, no characteristic clothing or foods, no ways of dating and marrying and family-making. We have no atheist-inspired life GUIDANCE.

And, mostly — immersed in the near-infinity of western overculture — we don’t yet have any feeling that we might need something like that. After all, we seem fully able to conduct our lives, right? We live, we go to school, we get jobs, we marry, have kids, go on vacations, all the stuff of day-to-day life. And we still get to be atheists.

Atheism vs Predators

But the fact is, we live inside cultural conditions just about 100 percent borrowed from others. Some of it is religious, and we make an effort to avoid that part, but a great deal of it is irrational without being religious, and goes unnoticed. As I said, when I talk about “western overculture” I’m also talking about all that non-Legacy stuff, the churning mix of in-the-moment messages and ideas that come from mass media and business marketing.

Who among us doesn’t know “A Diamond is Forever”? Picture generations of young men and women absorbing that assertion, spending thousands of dollars on little clear rocks as a way to express true love. Considering that we defined Legacy as “cultural wisdom that helps you live better,” what is there in “A Diamond is Forever” that does that? Nothing. “A Diamond is Forever” is, in fact, not only non-rational but almost purely predatory. Rather than adding to the lives of those who accept it, it takes from them. It’s a statement deliberately engineered to benefit diamond merchants, a way to suck money out of hopeful youngsters seeking a way to express love and permanency, youngsters who lack Legacy to assist them and who are thus helpless against the clever marketing.

The difference between Legacy and marketing is that the one is a body of ideas worked out over centuries as a way to (mostly) help people, while the goal of marketing is to USE people. If I work for Del Monte and I put an ad on TV about green beans, I’m not there to tell you to eat green beans, any green beans, for the sake of your health. I’m there to tell you to eat DEL MONTE green beans. I might accompany the message with a rhyming jingle to help it stick in your head, or a Mr. Whipple-like character to make it fun and memorable, but the amount of help I give you in the living of YOUR life is close to zero. And there is nothing in my advertising that lends itself to passing on to help any future generations you produce.

Whereas a strong home culture might give you tools for protecting yourself from the predatory parts of overculture — picture the Amish or Hasidic Jews as extreme examples — we atheists have nothing like that. Having rebelled against the brainwashing of religion, we feel all safe and free and smart. Yet we are still subject to the great mass of other non-rational, sometimes even anti-rational, influences that permeate overculture.

How many atheist men buy diamonds for their wives-to-be, and how many atheist women happily accept them? I’ll bet the number is lower than the general population, but still unfortunately high.

And just how free are we on a holiday like Easter? Free to celebrate it in private as we ourselves choose, but given a traditional family event, there many of us are, joining hands around the table for the family prayer. Given a Christian funeral with a minister, goddy eulogy and prayerful observance, few of us are going to raise our voices in rejection.

The point is, we fancy ourselves outside “it” all, but we’re often on the edges of it, and sometimes even in the heart of it. Because we have nothing of our own, other than individual atheism, to protect and guide us.

But we COULD have something of our own.

Yes, some will say atheism speaks to this ONE point — a lack of belief in gods. But the PEOPLE who espouse atheism, the atheists themselves, are free to create any sort of social structure they want. Something distinct from western overculture. Something that self-regenerates. Something that defends and maintains itself even in the face of extreme social pressures. Something that provides a home, a safe place, for both the people and the philosophy. Something — a Legacy — that can be passed on to following generations.

I said some time back I no longer consider myself a liberal, but rather a Rational Centrist. Certainly I’ve managed to piss off an ample number of liberal-trending people with my jaundiced view of modern feminism, and rejection of those liberal-heartstring-plucking outrage stories (Fort Lauderdale hates the homeless!, etc.) and memes constantly projected at us.

But lately I seem to be equally good at pissing off certain conservative-trending people with my views regarding LaVoy Finicum, the “militia” member involved in the wildlife refuge takeover in Oregon.

My response to the picture-meme above:

Yeah, two more miracles and he becomes a saint.

When you arm up and take over a public building, vowing repeatedly to go down shooting, and then almost hit an officer with your vehicle, your “Honest Law-Abiding Citizen” card is voided. After that, any action but peaceful surrender MUST be considered an active threat to officers and bystanders. Sitting under a tarp with a rifle didn’t do his “sane, peaceful citizen” image any good either. To the officers involved, he must have looked loony and dangerous, and I can’t blame them even a little bit for taking him down in that tense situation.

Seems to me the people in that vehicle ALREADY KNEW the cops weren’t aiming to kill them. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been out driving around so casually. If you know you’re only going to be arrested, and you deliberately do something that gets you killed — say charging out angrily and reaching into your coat — it’s hard to see that as anything but Suicide By Cop.

Probably every one of the officers involved have families who hoped for their safe return that day. I can’t help but remember that. It will be interesting, in the days to come, to find out who those officers are, and what sort of service histories they have. I’ll bet we’ll see records of cool-headedness and restraint.

It seems to me that trying to make this guy into some sort of patriotic folk hero is not simply a mistake, but an insult to real heroes — many of which serve in “the American Government.”

The police roadblock at which Finicum managed to get himself killed is being characterized in conservative circles as an “ambush.” One of the mildest comments I saw criticized the police with “Diplomacy in resolving conflict, no matter how long it takes, is the wiser course.” I responded:

This WAS diplomacy. If these were heavily-armed black gangstas holed up in a building in NYC, they’d all be dead and the building burned down ON THE FIRST DAY. But even in diplomacy, I don’t expect officers to let themselves get shot.

I dismissed the hero-worship elsewhere with:

The thing about Finicum is that he was ON RECORD that he wouldn’t be taken alive, that he would fight to the death. That he came close to killing an officer with his vehicle adds on. The question isn’t “Did he have his hands up?”, the question is “Did he act in such a way as to make it obvious he was no threat? Did he act to guarantee his safety and the safety of the officers involved?” And the answer is, no, he ratcheted up the danger by failing to surrender instantly and peacefully.

His obituary was interesting, in that it baldly asserts he was “murdered.”

Robert LaVoy Finicum was born on January 27, 1961 in Kanab, UT and was murdered the day before his 55th birthday on January 26, 2016. […] LaVoy loved God, his family, and his country. He believed that the Constitution of the United States was inspired by God and he was willing to, and did, die while defending our freedoms stated within.

The guest book attached is filled with glowing tributes, a LOT of them. (By the way, do NOT go over there and add comments. I realize the thing is public, being on the Internet, but this is not the time or place to set anyone straight.)

They’ve already got the makings of a shrine. I can’t help but imagine a statue in a year or two.